No, I'm not reading from headlines October 2002, but from October 1987. Specifically, October 20, 1987 -- the day after the big 508-point crash of October 19. Back then we had never seen anything like it. The Dow tumbling 508 points, close to a quarter of its value in one grisly bear of a day.

What's amazing, looking back at it, is how wrong so many were.

Market prognosticators who were saying a ten-year bear market was just starting -- they were wrong.

Experts who said it would take years to recoup those losses -- it took only months.

That the world would spin into a depression -- it did not.

That the market tumult would doom then Vice President Bush's bid to succeed Ronald Reagan -- he won easily.

My only point in rehashing history is to get some perspective. I covered that crash and talked to those experts. The same ones preaching doom and gloom and saying it was 1929 all over again. It wasn't then. It isn't now.